We investigate Veblen effects on work hours, namely the way that a desire to emulate the consumption standards of the rich induces longer work hours among the rest. Consistent with our model of these asymmetric social comparisons, greater inequality predicts longer work hours in ten OECD...

This paper investigates whether one’s effort to keep up with the Joneses has any effect on labor supply behavior. We provide a simple model and empirical evidence that labor supply decisions of married women are influenced by relative as well as absolute income of their husbands. We find,...

This paper examines how banking market concentration affects small business credit. Based on an idea that line-of-credit (L/C) limit and L/C balance provide useful proxies for credit supply to and credit demand of a firm, we examine the effect of bank concentration on L/C limits and L/C...

We explain the substantial decline in work hours over the 20th century by the joint influence of the employees’ “pecuniary emulation” of the “conspicuous consumption” of top income earners and the balance of political power of employers and employees in the presence of conflicts of...

We investigate the manner in which a desire to emulate the rich influences individuals' allocation of time between labour and leisure, greater inequality inducing longer work hours as a result. Data on work hours in ten countries over the period 1963-98 show that greater inequality is indeed...

This paper examines how banking market concentration affects small businesses finance. Using the Survey of Small Business Finance, the empirical model show that bank concentration may adversely affect the amount of credit supplied to small businesses. We find that bank concentration decreases...

This paper provides a simple model and an empirical test of the effect of interpersonal income comparisons on labor supply. By focusing on the relative income of a full-time working man and its effect on the wife’s labor supply decision, we examine the role of relative income in labor supply...

This article uses data from the 2003 Survey of Small Business Finances to determine if banks ration credit more severely to black-owned firms. Our results reveal this is the case. Using the Heckman two-step procedure, we determined that black- and white-owned firms have a comparable demand for...

We investigate the importance of Veblen effects on work hours, namely the manner in which a desire to emulate the consumption standards of the rich influences individuals’ allocation of time between labor and leisure. Our model of the choice of work hours captures Veblen effects by taking...